Monday, August 18, 2003

Congressman Tells Off Greenspan:But today you have reached a new low, I think, by suggesting that manufacturing in America doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where the product is produced. We've lost 2 million manufacturing jobs in the last two years alone; 10 percent of our workforce. Wal-Mart has replaced General Motors as the major employer in America, paying people starvation wages rather than living wages, and all of that does not matter to you - doesn't matter.

"If it's produced in China where workers are making 30 cents an hour, or produced in Vermont where workers can make 20 bucks an hour, it doesn't matter. You have told the American people that you support a trade policy which is selling them out, only working for the CEOs who can take our plants to China, Mexico and India. -- Representative Bernard Sanders (Independent, VT), quoted by Henry C K Liu in an very long article in the Asia Times which provides a lot of clues to what's really going on.

Thanks to Mary in Fort Worth for sending the article. I wish I understood economics better so that I could explain the article better! Here's another choice quote:

Neo-imperialism works by making the world's poor finance the high living of the world's rich. It transcends the Marxist notion of class struggle and surplus value. In neo-liberal globalization, not just labor but even capital comes from the exploited.